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| A massively multiplayer 3D rpg. An enormous virtual environment with it's own economy and thousands of other players on seperate servers. Choose from a variety of races and classes, find other players as allies and venture to crypts, dark keeps, and even other planes! Another retail game. The community isn't much better than UO. |
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| Ultima Online is probably the biggest online role-playing game in existence. It uses an angled-down view to show the player a massive world with hidden dungeons and keeps, in which lurk ghouls and even ettins. A wide variety of magical weapons exist, but the more powerful ones are extremely rare. Hundreds of spells, weapons, armor, items, skills, clothing, and character looks exist. The downside? An online game is only as good as it's community, and you will be killed dozens and dozens of times by other players. This is a retail game, which means you need to buy it, then pay-to-play. |
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| Even in games with failing communities such as UO (though they have taken steps to improve it) there will always be a guild for those who want to roleplay legitimately rather than go around in warbands and kill people for their heads. This is the best guild I've seen for friendly players who want a sense of comradery. The Brotherhood of Crimson Knights is well organized and has great benefits for it's members, including promotions in the expansive ranking system. |
| Links to Role-playing games and sites we've found on the net. |
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| Furcadia is one of the strangest RPGs you can find. The player RPs an animal character called a Furre, choosing from races like ferrets, horses, canines, felines, and rodents. Eye color, fur color, fur markings, and clothing colors are selected and can be changed in game. The game itself is an angled-down display with decent, colorful art. There are no rules, you can do nothing but pick up an item. In essence it's playing an RPG, but everything you do must be MUD style. It can be good if you have friends and tolerance. The community is excellent, and the game is free! It's not for everyone, but best for Redwall fans. |
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| Asheron's Call Drawn into a strange, troubled land by a mysterious portal, you'll need to use all your wits, skills, and tactics to survive in the world of Dereth. Form organized allegiances with other players, who will get vassals in turn, raising your status. Discover new and improve upon old spells with a unique, reagent-based magic system. Explore over 500 square miles of stunning 3D terrain, most of which is unsafe for the weaker folk. Other players welcome you where you would be murdered in other games. As you gain experience, skill points may be spent on weapon training, or improving base attributes, such as strength and intelligence. Characters are labeled as classes (with the exception of the Adventurer, which is a jack of all trades and master of none type hero) but have tons of room to grow. This is a retail game, but the charge isn't as much as some others, and with a simple membership you get access to free games on the MSN Gaming Zone. Be aware: though you can have several players on several servers, it will take literally hours to set up a new server on a dial-up connection. You only have to go through it once... |
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| An absolutely wonderful game with an angled down isometric view, and graphics reminiscient of those good old Super NES RPGs. Ah, those were the days. The world of Temuair is of a decent size, not crowded at all, and very easy to get around in. One can take a boat out of Abel's port, then dock at Loures and walk to the ruins for some hunting. Every town is on its own server, meaning almost no lag, but players in different towns can still message eachother. Character class need not be chosen upon starting a character. Instead, a player can find a mentor to guide him through the temple and sponsor him in his chosen path. Several dozen spells for mages, and altogether different ones for priests. Public, in-game bulletin boards, some of which are themed (like the one outside the cathedral, or in the library), friendly community, explorable towns, hidden quests from NPCs, organized religions, weddings that can only be made official by a high-level priest, numerous different weapons for the different classes, alchemical formulae, and so much more you need to visit the site! This is a pay to play, but you get to download it from the site. |
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